


a yellow leaf touching the green ones on its way down; rebirth, the last life is a forgotten dream

by notavodkashot



Series: FFXV one shots [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV, Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Juuni Kokki | Twelve Kingdoms Fusion, Angst and Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, canon fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 19:21:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13219515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notavodkashot/pseuds/notavodkashot
Summary: The Life and Times of the Last Kirin of Tai.





	a yellow leaf touching the green ones on its way down; rebirth, the last life is a forgotten dream

**Author's Note:**

> This is quite possibly the most inaccessible thing I've written in a while. It's not going to make much sense at all unless you're very familiar with the plot and setting of Juuni Kokki. Sorry about that.
> 
> Dedicated to the gorgeous Julyan, who created [the beautiful art](http://0dinkyicarus.tumblr.com/post/169081689286/%E5%8D%81%E4%BA%8C%E5%9B%BD%E8%A8%98the-twelve-kingdoms-au-where-young-cor-is-a) that inspired this madness.

* * *

_a yellow leaf touching the green ones on its way down; rebirth, the last life is a forgotten dream_

* * *

Tai-ou falls abruptly, consumed by that unspoken darkness that heralds the wrath of Mt. Hou. Tairin fell half a year before her, weeping into her hands as shitsudou consumed her inside out. 

“She lasted forty years,” Enki says, sitting on the carpet at En-ou's feet. 

En-ou, who has, at this point, sat his throne four hundred and sixty four years, hums in the back of his throat, but says nothing. 

“Forty years can be a very long time,” Enki adds, frowning, “under a certain kind of King.” 

“You would know,” En-ou says, grinning easily as he nudges the Kirin's back with the tip of his shoe, “wouldn't you?” 

But Enki does not laugh at him, teasing back. 

Because Enki does know, and sometimes knowing is too much too heavy, to joke about. 

“I feel sorry for the people of Tai,” he says instead, and En-ou leans over to pull him up into a hug. “We could...” 

“No,” En-ou says, because his dominion ends at the borders of En, and he's got four hundred and sixty four years of practice, making sure he doesn't stray beyond that. “You know why,” he adds, before being asked, because he also has four hundred and sixty four years of practice, in the delicate art of knowing when to listen to his better half, and when to ignore him entirely. 

“I do,” Enki sighs, and buries his face into his King's chest, the safest refuge he's ever known, “I do.” 

* * *

The years go on, and the Shashinboku's branch remains barren and empty. 

Tai withers, writhing under plague and demons and famine. 

En doesn't flourish, so much as remains, coffers full, harvests plentiful, nights serene. 

On the eleventh year, a ranka appears on Tai's branch. 

On the eleventh year, the ranka is lost. 

“It's not our Kingdom,” Enki tells En-ou, with the stubborn set of his mouth, “but it's not someone else's Kingdom, either.” 

En-ou considers this and knows his input is essentially meaningless when the decision has clearly already been made and prepared for. 

“Don't be a stranger,” he says, smile wry. “Prompto.” 

Enki smiles, fiercely determined. 

“Only ever a hero, Nyx,” he replies, and on his forehead, his horn shines bright as the shoku opens, mouth gaping wide in the distance. 

The storm will ravage the coast, of course. But towns can and have been evacuated, and provisions are in place, to handle the aftermath. En has provisions for everything, even this. 

En-ou sits on the shore, feeling sand beneath his fingers, and recalls the old memory of a different kind of storm, and a different kind of shore. 

Four centuries, steadily approaching five, sounds like a monstrous number, somtimes. Sometimes, it is every bit as monstrous. But time is nothing but the whisper of today stretched on as far as it can go, and while En-ou must by necessity keep his eyes fixed in the distance, ever vigilant to what's coming his way, Nyx Ulric's never forgotten the value of existing in the now. 

* * *

Enki returns – he returns often, constantly, to bathe in clean water and breathe air not clogged by smog and sit on En-ou's left knee and critique his penmanship, but this time he does not intend to go back – one crisp, cold morning, holding a boy's hand in his own and wearing the smug, self-satisfied smile that his King taught him so many centuries ago. 

Taiki is small and quiet and sullen, but when Enki leaves him in the care of the nyosen, he does not protest. 

He does not speak, either. Not much. Not often. But life is soft and tender, in Mt. Hou, and eight years in Hourai are nothing against a promise of eternity. At least, they hope so. 

“He can't turn,” Enki tells his King, sitting on his desk and bouncing his heels on the sturdy wood. “I turned as soon as I got home.” He frowns. “But I had Nana.” His expression turns sad. “I hear the nyokai of Tai died trying to protect the ranka from the storm. So he's... all alone, now.” 

“You worry entirely too much,” En-ou says, tugging on a lock of the wild, messy blond mane. “He's not you.” 

“Of course he's not me,” Enki snorts, rolling his eyes. “But he's. You know.” 

En-ou knows. 

He tugs on that mane again, until Enki whines, nostrils flaring and blue eyes sharp. 

“He's safe in Mt. Hou and as well cared for as he could possibly be,” En-ou declares, in that patient, solemn tone of his that somehow lets him state the obvious and make it into something else. Enki hates it, as much as he appreciates the effect. “But he's a boy, in the end, and all boys need friends.” 

Enki ponders this, feet swinging and teeth worrying the inside of his lip, and then sneaks into the King's lap, curled up like the small child he very much isn't, not anymore. En-ou says nothing, beyond wrapping an arm around his back to keep him in place, and continues reading the digest on his desk. 

“All Kirin,” Enki says, after a while, watching En-ou's hand as he rolls a coin along his knuckles, back and forth, and ponders a new tax reform, “need a King.” 

* * *

Taiki is fifteen, when he's deemed strong enough to receive the pilgrimage. He's been asking since he was ten, because he understands duty, best of all, particularly after Enki agrees to take him to visit Tai. Tai suffers, without its ruler, and Taiki chafes, under his guilt. 

Taiki is fifteen when he meets Mors, grandiose and terrible and proud. He rejects him on the spot, too shaken by the memories of soldiers back home – it wasn't home, he knows now, but it felt like it, even if it was literally poisoning him every step of the way – to even consider something else. 

Taiki is fifteen when Mors offers to take him out hunting, despite the deadpan crushing of his hopes of Kinghood. 

“Bloodless, of course,” he says, laughing at a joke Taiki doesn't understand, “though not just for your sake, Taiho. The best sport always is.” 

Taiki is fifteen when he sharpens his will and finally forces something other than himself to submit. 

“Ardyn,” he calls, and the darkness laughs and rolls into a suitably monstrous shape. “No,” Taiki says, blue eyes razor sharp as the sword he misses keenly in his hands. “Your true shape, to go with your true name.” 

“You're going to be positively insufferable,” the demon – shirei – says, folding back into a human enough facade, “aren't you?” He trails the back of his knuckles along Taiki's cheek and tilts his face up with a smirk far too wide to hide his nature. “Ah, but the end will surely be worth it.” 

Taiki is fifteen when Mors becomes Tai-ou, Ardyn laughing – always laughing – in his ear. 

“Cor,” Taiki says, as they climb down the stairs and he knows without a shadow of doubt, that he's done what he must. “My name is Cor.” 

“I'll call you Kouri, then,” Tai-ou tells him, which is not the same thing, but he's bowed down to this man, after all, so what does he know? 

Ardyn laughs and laughs and laughs, but that's what demons are meant to do, so Taiki ignores him. 

Taiki is fifteen when he admits to himself, sitting in the rotting ruins of Hakkei palace's gardens, that he misses home. Sure, Cid was rough with him, telling him to shape up and be a man already, but there was a hope, there, that he could do something to change things. There's war in Tai, the same there was in Lucis. The only difference is that no one expects the Taiho to walk through the trenches, passing along messages or trying to pull bodies out of heaps before they became corpses. Blood is poison and corruption to a Kirin, and Tai is deeply buried in it, so the Taiho's kept in Hakkei palace, amidst the ghost of glory of past Kings. 

Taiki is fifteen and he wishes for nothing more than a sword and the will to actually serve his king. He's got neither, but he's got Ardyn... perhaps that will be enough. 

* * *

“He's the fabled black Kirin,” Tai-ou tells En-ou, on his first official visit to En. “The Legends say he will choose the Chosen King.” 

Taiki has asked nothing of his King, except the chance to see Enki again one day. Now Tai is... quiet, if not peaceful, with the echo of Ardyn's whistling as he ghosts around the ruined wastelands and makes sure they stay that way; Taiki's sword that is no sword, and so much more deadly because of it. Since En-ou does not forbid it, Tai-ou does not deny his Kirin this one whim. 

“A black Kirin will choose the Chosen King,” En-ou agrees, and casually disagrees, wary smile buried so far down it doesn't reach his face, “they are so rare there's only be a few on record. They're good omens of prosperity and hope for a long reign, as it is.” 

He watches Enki drag the smaller boy about, one hand wrapped around his wrist, and focuses on not letting his frown reach his face. Tai-ou laughs, and beneath it, so deep down most men wouldn't hear it, En-ou hears the tilt of a tyrant in it. 

* * *

“He bound a toutetsu for him!” Enki snarls at his King, after the royal procession of Tai has moved on to Kei, because he is a creature of divine mercy, but in En-ou's experience, that only makes people forget the divine wrath that usually comes along with it. “A toutetsu! No one's ever done that before! And now he's making him _use_ it to fight his war! Shirei are not meant to be _weapons_ , they're meant to be shields!” 

En-ou is silent for a moment. 

“What's that?” He asks, trying to start from the beginning, since he's clearly going to have to start at all. “A... toketsu?” 

“Toutetsu,” Enki corrects, blue eyes burning with outrage. En-ou does not like to see him like this, though it is at least a small comfort, that he's not the source of his rage. “Do you remember the man with the hat that follows after him?” 

En-ou does. It was a very strange hat, indeed, almost like something you'd find in the other world, and it had caught his eye easily enough, even if the true memorable thing was the man's entirely too wide smile and the subtle hint of purple to his hair and of gold in his eyes. 

“Yes,” En-ou replies, frowning slightly. 

Enki stares at him solemnly, licking his lips. 

“He's not a man,” he says softly, delicately. 

Ah, En-ou thinks, nodding slowly, moving pieces in the board. Well then. 

* * *

Taiki does not advice Tai-ou, Ardyn does. 

But Ardyn serves Taiki, so he hopes that's good enough. 

* * *

Six years into his reign, with Tai pacified through fear and iron, Tai-ou declares himself the Chosen King, prophecied to bring an end to the darkness and usher the whole world into an age of Light. 

Six years into his reign, shitsudou blooms like poison flowers all over Taiki's skin. 

“It's alright,” Ardyn says, running his fingers through the short mane that Taiki has refused to let grow, despite the whispers of the court, “you love him so much, I'll make sure you're together, when it's time.” 

* * *

“You caused this!” Tai-ou snarls at En-ou, drawing his sword and pointing it at him, an insult made greater by the fact En-ou is a guest of Tai-ou's hospitality. “You're jealous of my destiny! Determined to upstage me!” 

“If the King of En had lost his way,” En-ou replies, staring him down his nose and refusing to even acknowledge the threat, “it would be Enki who would be suffering now.” 

“I am the Chosen King,” Tai-ou repeats, like repetition will make it true. 

En-ou looks pointedly at the sword in his hand. 

“So choose.” 

* * *

In Hourai, Lucis wars with Nilfheim, same as it has for hundreds of years. 

Cor knows now, why the smell of blood makes his knees want to buckle, why he never could master a sword well enough to be of help, even though he wanted nothing more than to keep Cid safe. But he also knows the weight of his own will. His will binds Ardyn, it can bind his own nature, too. 

“You have such a delicate taste for suicide,” Ardyn tells him, one arm wrapped around his waist as he helps him back into the cave they've made into home for now. 

Cor understands now, like he didn't before, that Ardyn will obey him, because he's made him do it, but that's not enough to change what he is. Ignorance does not excuse the harm it brings, but acknowledging it is the only way to challenge it. 

Ardyn is wrong in his taunting, though. He's wrong in everything except the crucial, sharpest truths, always. Cor did not come to Hourai to die. Cor knows what he is, what he must do, and what happens when he fails. He's got scars on his skin, shadows of the sores that tore open when Tai-ou's negligence and delusions reached the tipping point and brought down the wrath of the Heavens upon their heads. 

Cor might be a Kirin, the shape buried deep beneath his bones, somewhere he's never been able to reach, but he's also a soldier. Was a soldier first, before anything else. Cor knows that if you're too weak to do your duty, there's only one thing to do. Well, two, but Ardyn is wrong, and Cor doesn't want to die, not really, lest of all because that'd mean Ardyn would be free to be exactly what his nature demands he becomes. 

“Shut up, Ardyn,” he says, even as supports his weight on him, trying his best to keep his steps even. 

The only recourse of the weak is to become strong, and Cor knows nowhere better to learn how to be strong, than Hourai. 

* * *

“He's hiding from me,” Enki announces, dropping himself into the King's soft, mostly unused bed with a wary sigh. “He knows I'm there and he knows I'm looking for him, but he's _hiding_ from me.” 

En-ou does not tell him he's pouting, even though he is. En-ou does not tell him to give it time. En-ou thinks of Ryurin succumbing to shitsudou the year before, when Ryu-ou decided to invade Tai to try and put a permanent stop to the influx of refugees disrupting his Kingdom. En-ou thinks of Kei-ou, slowly but surely heading down the same path as the late Tai-ou, lashing out and making Keiki look paler and paler each day. 

En is prosperous and En is resilient, but there's only so much En can do, surrounded by misery and despair on all fronts. 

En-ou smiles instead, a degree softer than a smirk, and sighs. 

“The will of the gods always finds a way,” he says, and then grins when, as expected his partner whines. 

“ _Nyx_.” 

* * *

Ardyn laughs and laughs and laughs, when Cor meets Regis Lucis Caelum, pulled out of hiding to take the throne his father just vacated. He says nothing else, because Cor commands and Ardyn must obey, and Cor has ordered him to speak to no one. Ardyn poisoned Tai-ou with words, and Cor had been too young and too ignorant to realize it, but he knows better now. 

He knows better now. 

* * *

“Do you want a Kingdom?” Cor asks him, looks down on him, because Regis is young and Cor has grown old, grown tall, grown strong. 

Above their heads, the ceiling of their shelter shakes as the bombs hammer the earth like rain on a field. 

“Don't be weird,” Clarus says, because Clarus has known Cor for years now, watching him orbit around the late King with wary respect. “He already has a kingdom, Cor.” 

No one's ever seen Cor kill a single man, no one has seen him brandish his sword as anything other than for show, but somehow Cor has managed to survive. Him, and the smiling, mute man that always trails after him. Clarus doesn't trust him. Either of them. He likes Cor, well enough, but he can't shake that feeling, in the bottom of his gut, that wherever Cor goes, ruin follows. 

“No,” Cor replies, eyes fixed on Regis, all of nineteen years old and about to buckle under the weight of his fate, “he has a crown and a war-torn wasteland.” He frowns. “Do you want a Kingdom?” 

Regis feels it, in his bones, the significance of the question, even if he doesn't understand it. 

“Is it a rich, prosperous kingdom?” He asks, this man he knows to be his father's most loyal follower, the last line of defense in his service. Who has failed, despite it all, because he's standing before him and asking him riddles that feel like something more, and his father lies dead somewhere across the battlefields that used to be Lucis. 

“No,” Cor replies, because he's been gone for years now, and he knows what happens, to a Kingdom without a King. “But it could be, if you make it that way.” 

The ceiling is shaking harder now. 

“Cor,” Clarus insists, staring at the lamp that swings wildly above their heads, casting terrible shadows all over their faces. “Now it's not the time.” 

Weskham bursts through the door, jaw set. 

“We need to go,” he says, “we need to go right now. They've-” 

Cor sees the shadows coming, feels in his gut the painful, wretched twist because there's blood in the air, but he's grown used to it, so his knees don't bend. He's learned to withstand it. 

“Ardyn.” 

Ardyn laughs, even as Weskham dies, choking on darkness and magic gone so horribly wrong it's right. 

“Do you want a Kingdom?” Cor asks, staring down at Regis, cradling Clarus' body – unconscious but not dead, not yet – close to his side. 

Regis' fingers tighten on the armor over Clarus' chest, nails scratching on the metal. 

“I do.” 

Cor slides down to his knees, forehead to the ground, and bestows the blessing that tastes like a curse on his tongue. 

* * *

Enki yells at Taiki, when Taiki has been washed enough that Enki is no longer in danger of fainting just by being in his presence. Taiki smirks, amused, when he realizes he now towers over the elder Kirin, nearly four full heads, and pointing that out only makes Enki yell more. 

So Taiki does the only logical thing left to him, and he wraps his arms around Enki, and then laughs, a low, rich sound, when it makes him splutter. 

“En Taiho is the oldest among their kind,” En-ou explains to Regis and Clarus, as they sit in one of the many gardens in Genei Palace and watch the scene. “He feels responsible for all of them.” 

“He's just a boy,” Clarus says, frowning with mistrust at the pervasive feeling of opulence all around him, like only a soldier can. 

“He is,” En-ou agrees, smile softening with fondness, “and he is not. He is exactly what he needs to be. They all are.” 

Clarus frowns and frowns, because this is not his world. But it is, it seems, Regis' world, and he is nothing if not loyal. 

* * *

Tai-ou is not a bad King. 

He is, however, a very sad King. 

He misses his home, his people, his friends. 

“You didn't have to send him away,” Taiki says, rather than ask, because it's not his place to question his King. 

Clarus has crossed the portal and been sent back to Hourai and the eternal war between Nilfheim and Lucis. Privately, in those corners of his mind where only Ardyn ever dwells, Taiki thinks he's been sent away to die. 

“I had to,” Tai-ou replies, with a tired, little smile that twists painfully in Taiki's gut. “Kings don't have Kirin to guide them, in Lucis, but they have Shields. And when the King can't go on, the Shield endures.” 

Taiki remembers Clarus' father, a looming shadow forever by his King's side. 

“I would not make for a very good Shield,” Taiki says, lips pulled into a very tiny frown. 

No one looked twice, in Hourai, because Cor was deadpan and quiet and his scarce words were almost always cold. But everyone expects Taiki to be... anything other than who he is. Kirin are holy creatures of purity and light, after all. Taiki feels sorry for Tai, because they've got him instead. 

“No, you wouldn't,” Tai-ou replies, not unkindly, and offers a hand that Taiki takes only after the briefiest hesitation, “but I'd much rather, if you could consider it, that you tried to be my friend.” Tai-ou's smile is lopsided, like one side of his mouth is forever weighted down. “We're in this together, after all.” 

Taiki stares at their entwined hands. No one else would dare touch the Taiho, not when humans are so naturally impure, so traditionally known to be unclean. Humans have passions and wants and desires, they have sins and regrets and mistakes. That leaves a mark, or so Ardyn claims, forever curling his words into his ear, searching for the one that will make him stumble, make him falter, and unleash his shirei back into the world in full. 

“We are,” Taiki admits, tightening his hold on Tai-ou's hand, and holding his stare with his eyes, “I will try.” 

Tai-ou smiles. Taiki hopes he won't regret it. 

* * *

The years pass. 

Tai is pacified, not by fear and iron, but by compromise. Tai-ou is a beloved King, and Taiki feels, at long last, that the blunders of his youth might be forgiven. He keeps close to his King, though his advice is less advice and more vague opinions revealing just a tiny shadow of hope. Tai-ou takes them into consideration anyway. 

En-ou celebrates five hundred years on his throne. 

“Tell me about your first King,” Tai-ou asks, lying on his side on the enormous bed, so late into the night, the sun is already peeking through the horizon. 

Taiki, sitting as he's wont to do, with his back against the side of the bed, tenses all over. 

“Why?” He asks, not daring to look up and see the look on Tai-ou's face. 

Tai-ou reaches a hand to finger the still short mane, messy and soft and unevenly cut. 

“Because you've never told anyone,” Tai-ou says, voice kind, “not about who he was, to you. That kind of thing, it festers, if you don't let it out.” 

Taiki thinks of the late Tai-ou, of his self-assured smirks and his strong promises and his hand, gentle and almost reverent, upon his head. 

“He was the King,” Taiki says, “and I was the Sword.” 

Except... except there was more than that, too. Because Tai-ou had ambitions and designs, and Taiki agreed to each of them, unsure if he was even allowed to understand them, nevermind argue against them. Tai-ou commanded, and Taiki obeyed, and Taiki had liked it, because it was simple and straightforward right up until it wasn't, and then his skin tore open to let the world know the Heavens were displeased. 

A hand, gentle but never reverent, reaches out to tilt Taiki's face up, to meet Tai-ou's eyes. 

“Tell me about your first King,” he says, again. 

Taiki takes a deep breath, then another, then crawls up into the bed, and does. 

* * *

Years pass. 

Tai endures. 

Ardyn whispers and laughs. Tai-ou smiles and pushes onward. Taiki remembers and keeps looking back. 

When war breaks out in Ryu, but it's not only En that receives wave after wave of those trying to escape the horrors of a failing King. Tai struggles, sometimes, but it endures. It endures. 

Taiki looks at the sky, sometimes, in the direction of Mt. Hou, and prays he's done the right thing. 

* * *

“You need a hobby,” Enki announces one day, as they walk through the sinous paths of the garden. 

Tai-ou planted entire fields of rare, delicate black flowers, to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of his coronation. Taiki is not sure what the flowers mean, among all the possible meanings Ardyn has told him they could have. He could ask, but then he would know, and there is something terrible, about certainty. 

“A hobby,” Taiki repeats, arching an eyebrow down at his friend. 

“I like painting,” Enki says. “Back... in Hourai, I liked photography. I used to miss it, because there's really nothing like it here. I told Nyx, after I found him, and he suggested painting. It's not the same, but it's nice. Relaxing.” Enki gives Taiki a little teasing smile. “You need a hobby.” 

Taiki thinks of Ardyn, whom he's on speaking terms, again. Because after... after talking about his first King with Tai-ou, after thinking and thinking about it, he's found himself thinking he's been cruel to his shirei. Ardyn poisoned his King with ambition, yes, but it was Taiki's weakness that allowed him to do so. Ardyn can't help but being who he is. 

None of them can. 

And he thinks of Tai-ou, as well, who is kind and ruthless and determined to be a King Taiki won't regret. Who touches him like he's not made of glass, and teases him like they're both on equal ground. Who calls him friend and means it, and leaves Taiki helpless but to do the same. 

“Riddles,” Taiki says, hands folded into the depths of his sleeves, fingers tracing along the old scars of sores and divine wrath. “I like riddles.” 

* * *

It is said that Tentei rebuilt the world after the previous one fell to corruption and chaos. Thus the world was made anew, with Law above all sustaining the design. 

Humans love laws, in Taiki's experience, but only so long as they are the ones who make them. Thus the separatist faction that has seized power in Tai decries the law of the Heavens, the system of Kings and Kirins, and the notion of divine will, above all things. Taiki feels profoundly guilty, because his poor performance is constantly used as an example of how flawed the whole system is. Why should they starve and suffer, they yell out in the streets, purely because the Kirin made the wrong choice and the King has become unstable? Refugees from Ryu, still with fresh memories of the massacres that ignited the civil war, join their cries with their own grievances against the Heavens themselves. 

Tai-ou tries to pacify them, to compromise as he's always done, to find a peaceful solution. But the rebels don't want peace, not with him. They want blood. 

“If you want them gone,” Ardyn tells him, and Taiki, walking out the shadows with that swaying motion of his, like a boat braving invisible waves, “you need only say the word.” 

Tai-ou looks horrified, but because he is his friend, not just his King, Taiki licks his lips and speaks up. 

“I have been a King's Sword before,” he says, and holds Tai-ou's stare. 

“It is not the sword, but the hand that holds it,” Ardyn adds, one hand on Taiki's shoulder, grin wide like a scythe, “that decides the purpose of each swing.” 

“No,” Tai-ou says, forceful, a command so pure they cannot help but obey, “so long I live, you will not kill again. No matter what.” 

* * *

Tai-ou speaks of peace, of prosperity, of good will. 

Tai burns instead. 

* * *

When Taiki's taken, he sends Ardyn to guard Tai-ou. He cannot disobey his King, but Ardyn is good at loopholes and all Taiki wants is to make sure the King is fine. 

“If you die, a new Kirin will be born,” the leader of the rebels tells him, pressing the tip of his sword to Taiki's neck, forcing him to tilt his head up. “I don't want a new King.” 

He is a very large man, imposing. He commands loyalty from all around him, unquestioning and sincere. Where things different, Taiki thinks he could almost like him, one soldier to another. Taiki curses his nature, his inability to truly hate another. 

“You will bring the wrath of the Gods upon Tai,” Taiki says, eyes narrowed. 

“Yes,” the man replies, “I will.” 

Taiki frowns. 

“Why?” 

The man, known only as Glauca among his troops, smiles. 

“Because you cannot wage war against an enemy that isn't there.” 

* * *

Taiki feels the moment Tai-ou dies, just as they're transporting him further away from the capital. He feels it in his bones, the hollow, empty feeling of half his soul being torn away. It is just as painful the second time, as the first. Perhaps more so, because he knows what it means. He breaks free of his escort, ignoring the bite of steel into his skin, feet barely touching the ground as he runs towards his King, pulled along by an invisible chain. 

Faster, faster still, until his body melts with desperation and he springs free, at long last unraveling from the human shape that kept his bones in place. 

Taiki gallops on wind itself, a glimmer of black across the sky, straight to the palace slowly being consumed by flames. 

He finds Glauca standing over Tai-ou's body, blood heavy and nauseous in the air, but Taiki is used to the scent and the corruption, and he doesn't buckle under the strain, of the poison or the despair. 

“And now you-” Glauca begins, but never finishes, run through cleanly by a horn sharpened by Hourai's edge. 

Taiki shakes his head, dislodges the body like a ragdoll, and then cries out as his own blood begins to boil inside his veins. 

“Now you've done it,” Ardyn tuts, disposing of Glauca's body with a flick of his wrist as he watches Taiki writhe. 

Above them the sky darkens, silence spreading oppressive and condeming of the profound sin that has been committed. 

Taiki shrieks, last bits of light spent opening a meishoku, just seconds before the first strike of lightning. 

* * *

No one knows why, no one knows the exact nature of the sin, but there is no doubt that there was one, considering the punishment. 

Tai is left barren by the storm upon its land, unrelenting and unending, and in Mt. Hou, Tai's branch in Shashinboku withers and falls, turning to ash before it touches the ground. 

Enki cries into En-ou's chest, desolate. En-ou holds him close, and stares into the distance, wondering what will happen next. 

En has no contingency for this. 

The Twelve Kingdoms are now Eleven. 

* * *

And yet, even as Tentei rebuilt the world, a promise was made, should balance one day fail. 

A Kirin, black as the night sky, born to choose a King among Kings, a Chosen King to defeat the Darkness and cast the world back into an age of Light. 

So it was promised, because Tentei rebuilt the world, but did not change the nature of man's soul. 

* * *

“You've been following us,” Noctis says, grip tight around the handle of his sword. “Why?” 

At his side, Ignis and Gladio hold their own weapons in place, ready to follow their King where he might lead them. 

The man stares at them, frowning. He's tall and well-built, shoulders wide. His eyes are pale blue, and his hair is the sort of black that looks shiny under the right light. There's nothing really noteworthy about him, except the eerie quality of his stares, pointed and sharp, and the large, burn-like scar on his forehead. 

“I don't know,” he replies, sword held loosely in one hand, almost casually. “I just feel like I should.” 

Noctis frowns, licking his lips. 

“Who are you?” He demands, trying not to show how unnerved he is by the man's demeanor. 

The man gives him a strange look, as if no one had ever asked him that before. 

He's silent for so long, Noctis begins to shift his weight from one foot to the other. 

“What's your name?” He tries again, unable to shake off the feeling of skin crawling under his clothes. 

The man stares again, and then frowns. 

“I don't remember,” he says, then shrugs. “Does it matter?” 

Noctis knows it does, but he doesn't know how to explain it. The man looks over his shoulder as if listening to something, or someone. 

“Cor,” he says after a small pause. “You may call me Cor.” 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out on [DW](https://notavodkashot.dreamwidth.org/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/notavodkashot), if you'd like.


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